The Biden administration is set to announce the details of a major offshore wind lease sale for access to federal waters off the coasts of New York and New Jersey.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will announce on Wednesday the sale of more than 488,000 acres that will be made available to developers next month. The sale could generate up to 7 gigawatts of carbon-free power — or enough energy for 2 million homes.
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION PLANS RESTRICTIONS ON OIL AND GAS LEASING IN ALASKA
The sale follows the administration’s approval of the nation’s first two commercial-scale offshore wind projects in 2021 off the coasts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. President Joe Biden established a target of approving 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore wind announcement is part of a slew of initiatives executive agencies are laying out Wednesday related to renewable energy development and grid improvements funded through existing congressional authorizations.
The interior, defense, energy, and agriculture departments and the Environmental Protection Agency are forming a new interagency program to improve the review process for clean energy projects on public lands.
Currently, lands managed by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management include 36 wind projects, 38 solar projects, and 48 geothermal projects for a total capacity of about 12 gigawatts. The bipartisan Energy Act of 2020 set a target of 25 gigawatts of renewable energy on public lands by 2025.
“As we look to reform an outdated oil and gas leasing program and to clean up the discarded remains of extractive industries, like orphaned wells and abandoned mine lands, we know that clean energy, including solar onshore and offshore wind, geothermal, and wave and tidal energy projects will help communities across the country be a part of the climate solution while creating good-paying union jobs,” a senior administration official told reporters on a call.
Separately, the Energy Department is launching a “Building a Better Grid” initiative for deploying new electricity transmission lines across the grid. The program will finance new lines and upgrades through the recent bipartisan infrastructure law’s $2.5 billion Transmission Facilitation Program and through more than $13 billion in grants for states to better insulate their grids against outages.
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The Biden administration is seeking to boost renewable energy to put the U.S. on track to cut total greenhouse gas emissions by at least half by 2030. Biden is also targeting a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and net-zero emissions economy-wide by 2050 in conjunction with the Paris agreement.
Democrats had hoped to achieve those goals through a mix of restrictions on emissions from power generators and fossil fuel producers, as well as hundreds of billions in tax incentives for carbon-free energy production and installation, but opposition to their Build Back Better spending bill from Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin tanked the bill before Christmas.
Manchin has since said no negotiations over the bill are going on at this time, although he also said he sees the energy- and climate-related provisions in the Build Back Better legislation as the ones where a consensus is most likely.
In the meantime, another senior official described the administration’s approach as the “harnessing of other levers” at its disposal to advance clean energy with the passage of its agenda outstanding.
